


Something in the Water

by igraine1419



Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 07:26:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igraine1419/pseuds/igraine1419
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frodo discovers the true nature of the awful curse of the Brandybucks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something in the Water

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the livejournal community Waymeet "Crack me up" Challenge.  
> Crackfic - This Fic should be read as a piece of high Victorian melodrama.

It must have been there at the beginning, curled up inside like an ungerminated seed, it was always connected with the sound of water, but it was the phosphorescent light of a full moon that would disturb it and rouse it from its sleep.

When I first came to that great hall, I had my own room to sleep in, one amongst many, like cells in a gigantic, thrumming beehive. I noticed the noise at once, so much commotion, night and day, footsteps padding up and down and voices talking and laughing and shouting. It had been so quiet by the river, with only the hoarse croak of the river birds and the splashing of the rats and the creaking of oars as a boat streaked past. 

For hours I would sit and read or else just lie idle, thinking and looking at the clouds in the sky. Some would say it was unnatural for a hobbit to spend so much time alone and unoccupied, but it was our way, something passed down from my mother, who would spend hours just sitting at the bank and staring, sometimes at a tiny spot – a spotted trout on the riverbed or a heron fishing, as still as stone as it waited. So still, you almost believed you were imagining it.

Often in the summer, she would be looking for kingfishers; they were her chief pleasure. She once found a brilliant blue feather fallen from a kingfisher’s wing, which she took home and used as a bookmark. It wasn’t very adequate, for it would blow to the floor whenever she opened the page and we would have to scramble on our hands and knees to find it. When she read, she fell into the story and wouldn’t surface again until the pages were shut, it was a gift she had, and one I envied and would try to attain by studying hard at my letters and reading long into the night by a solitary candle. I once heard my mother and father arguing about it, when my candle had burned to a pool of wax. My father shouting that this feverish reading would turn me strange, but my mother simply laughed, and then there were no more raised voices. My mother always had the last word. Although she was gentle, there was also a firmness in her, and sometimes, when she was angry, her hand could squeeze so hard it turned my own quite white. I adored her though, nonetheless, and she loved me too, in her silent, easy way, brushing my hair slowly and carefully as I read to her from her favourite books. We were like pale twins together, only her hair was fair where mine was dark. She would whisper; we’re the same, you and I, we’re not like the others.

On bright summer mornings she would bathe, submerged up to her nose, her net of hair floating around the shallow mounds of her shoulders and in the winter she would skate in patterns of circles, looking down to where the water moved beneath with a slow sluggish heaving and when she tucked me into bed she would press her finger to her lips and smile secretively, and I would lie quiet and feel the silence radiating from her, letting the water in – its gentle babble or low roar when the rains had filled it to its banks. After the accident, all I could think of was the way she would slip from the water as though they were one, a hand inside a glove. 

When I grew older I too discovered the pleasures of the water. I used to swim by night. Deep quiet and the stars drifting, water slipping ice cold around my naked skin - a second skin of moonlight – I would gasp and shiver, laughing out loud, surprised at the changes in myself. 

Returning to bed, my body would smell of the weeds and the wet earth and it would fill my senses as I slept, bringing strange dreams full of longing. 

These dreams intensified in the strange clamour of Brandy Hall, and my aunt fretted over it. One night she heard me call out and she came running with the lamp to see what was wrong. I was sitting up, shivering in my sheets, my heart beating thick and slow. She thought that I was having nightmares and, frightened by the look of me, and the darkness in my eyes, she moved me in with Merry. 

We slept together Merry and I, and Merry would entertain me with funny stories and songs until we fell asleep and, for a time, I almost forgot about the books and the silence and the song in the water and it was good just to wake with a warm body beside me and the sunlight spilling over the sheets. I never felt cold then, always warm and comforted, and happy to forget whatever was troubling me when I was alone. I even thought of telling him, getting it out in the open, perhaps laugh about it as if it were some monumental joke. I almost let myself forget – I never swam again at night nor looked the full moon in the face, and what was within dwindled to the size of a star. 

Perhaps it would have come to nothing, had I not gone into the library that winter’s afternoon, when the rain made the leaded windows dark. It was the first time I had wandered into the library alone and I crept in quietly, as if this were a furtive pleasure I shouldn’t admit to. Creeping round the high shelves, my eyes roved over the spines, seeking out strange titles, old languages, words from far away that told tales of elves and men. I would touch the elvish books, sometimes drawing them out to hold in my hand, but the books about men I would treat warily, hardly daring to lay a finger on the dusty spine, in case something uncoiled. On that afternoon, I lingered about the books of men for longer than ever before and found a book of the histories of Numenor. It was a great black book, with a dusty velvet cover over it, to protect the old parchment beneath. It was so heavy it hurt my wrists as I held it in my hands. 

‘Frodo?’

I almost dropped the book, falling to my knees to prevent it from hitting the floor. Looking up I saw Merimac, come home from distant parts, standing in the doorway to the little reading room beyond, dark on this rainy, cold afternoon. 

‘What have you there?’ he said.

I didn’t want to tell him. It’s nothing, I said, shielding the cover with my hand. But he was persistent, intrigued, and walked slowly over to prise apart my fingers with a strong, cool grip and stared at the title, his brow lifting. ‘So I thought,’ he said, an eerie smile hovering about his lips. ‘Come into the reading room, Frodo, we haven’t talked in a while.’ 

So he came to know me and I came to know him. He poured me a strong drink, the first fire liquor I had ever drunk, and it burned as it went down. He talked to me first about his life, how it was just like the sea, calm and shining on a good day, only to turn wild the next, watching for my reaction. That’s how I knew, and when I looked into his eyes I could see something dark that was also in mine. 

‘Your mother knew about the water,’ he said. ‘She knew the water like a second skin. The mistake she made was marrying your father.’ 

My first reaction was to run, to run away to Merry, deny that we had a connection beyond that of blood. But in the end, my curiosity got the better of me and I would go to him in the dead of night when Merry was asleep. At first we merely talked. He would stand at the fireside with his eyes on the mirror that hung above and play his fingers over the glass globe set on the mantelpiece, with the stuffed owl within it, its amber eyes glowing strangely, as if it still had the capacity of thought. 

‘This owl, Frodo,’ he would say. ‘Is like you and I – it is trapped within its own skin and cannot get out.’

I would sit and hear his tales of adventure and freedom and wonder if there might be some good to be found in this, something here that might transport me from the Shire, make me more than I otherwise would be. He filled me with visions of exquisite pleasures, leaving my mind hungry and my body trembling. When his conversation dwindled and his eyes fell to the dying fire, Merimac would ask the question and my heart would fail me at the thought of the water and what might come of it and I would shake my head, pulling my knees up under my night shirt, and dropping my head. Then he would bid me goodnight and I would run back to my bed, aware of the looming shadows, but more afraid of the thrilling of my own skin, the full moon hanging and the slow, snaking sigh of the river outside the walls. 

Every night he would tempt me, and every night I went willingly to listen and to learn. He knew about many places, told me what I might come to know as vividly as he recalled. There wasn’t much time, he said, he would be leaving before the spring. As he spoke, I felt the world opening up before me like a great, yawning cave that I might enter if I had the courage, but I was afraid and clung to the part of me that was happy to live in the green fields and enjoyed the safe rituals of seasons and harvests. I clung to the thought of Merry and my friends, of the laughter in the morning.

It was with relief that I heard he was going away. I couldn’t bear anymore. For someone to confirm my strangeness and delight in it was almost too much. He offered to show me more, to display what he had become, but I shook my head, appalled, telling him I didn’t like the dark water and he laughed and said he had watched me with my mother. He had seen me, drifting pale, scooping up handfuls of stars. His eyes were gleaming like polished black stones – those bright blue eyes that in the daytime, would glitter with good humour. It chilled me to see them and I closed my eyes and told him no – I told him that I would not meet him anymore. 

He said, ‘I’ll be back soon, Frodo, and we’ll see how you feel then.’

I was afraid of his return, it consumed my mind; it was all I thought of, his persuasion and my fraying, weakening will. Already I was straying, wakeful at nights once more I would slip to the window and look out at the river, writhing like an inky snake, glittering in the moonlight. I would think about where it might lead, all the way to the sea. I thought about the other life I might have, I thought about freedom from rules, from convention, and conscience. 

Tired and fearful, I sat and watched the water from the high banks, not wanting to join the other lads as they splashed in the warm shallows, shouting, up to their waists. I would read, or else lie back and stare at the scudding clouds overhead. Aunt Esme started to worry about me and asked if I was happy. I would assure her that I was quite well, but she looked deep into my eyes and I think she saw it was a lie. She asked me why I wouldn’t join them in the river and I said that I didn’t like the river and it was then that she knew that something wasn’t right, for I was one of the river folk, it was in my blood. 

One day, just before the first spring planting, Aunt Esme came to me as I sat in my room, reading in a gloomy corner, avoiding the sight of the long, wide window. 

‘Frodo,’ she said. ‘This is your Uncle Bilbo.’

Bilbo stood in the doorway smiling, and then he came to me and shook my hand, and I felt in him a chord of sympathy and understanding. He rubbed and chafed my cold hands between his own warm hands, frowning. ‘This lad needs a change of air,’ he said, looking me hard in the eyes. ‘How would you like to live with me?’

I went at once, packing my bags in careless haste, and bidding my family a regretful farewell, waving from the back of a hired cart. Merry cried, but Aunt Esme told him that it was for the best, her arm around him tightening protectively, her smile growing cold as the cart pulled away. 

The change of scenery seemed to calm me for a while and we passed our days quietly and cheerfully, each of us absorbed in our separate studies. Sometimes, when I was reading, out of the corner of my eye, I would spy him staring at me in a watchful way, but when I raised my head he would look away, or else pretend a question of correct pronunciation was troubling him. He indulged me in my passion for learning, never once suggesting that any harm might come of it – all these books are here for you to read, Frodo-lad, he said, and if there is ever a question you would like me to answer I am here, should you need me. 

Although the water wasn’t far away, being so high on the top of the hill, its call wasn’t very clear and if the wind blew in the right direction, I couldn’t hear it at all. Bilbo ordered tall bushy plants to be grown close to the windows and hung suffocating velvet curtains to keep my bedchamber dark and muted at night. Once a month, on the full moon, he slipped the key into my bedroom door and secured the shutters fast. On the following morning, he would sip his morning tea uneasily, looked awkward and red faced, and no questions were asked or answered, and for that I was grateful. I became different, a Baggins - no longer a Brandybuck. Even when Merry came over for a visit, which wasn’t very often, for Aunt Esme was reluctant, I could slip easily into the role of favourite cousin and play happily in the woods with young Merry, although we never wandered as far as the Water if we could help it. When I refused to go further, Merry knew enough not to burrow any deeper, but slipped his hand into mine and followed me back over the hills. 

So the years flew by and I grew into myself, almost forgetting that I had any other face but this. I even lost some of my pallor, sitting out in the garden during the summer months, reading and talking to the gardener’s son, Sam, as he worked the flower beds. He seemed to like to talk to me, and his attentions made me grow fonder of myself and I no longer shied away from my reflection in the mirror, but brushed my hair with greater care and took an interest in my dress. Sam was a hobbit of simple pleasures and I encouraged him to talk to me about the world in the soil, about husbandry and farming and the language of clouds. I liked the slow, gentle way he handled tender young plants, firming them into the ground with his fingertips, being careful not to break the tiniest leaf or stalk. He seemed beautifully uncomplicated and innocent, and I clung to his conversation over those long, hot summers, as though I might drown out the shadow inside, make the bad thing flee away from the influence of so much that was pure. But the sticky, pollen-heady heat of the days seemed to fatten the thing inside and made me restless and anxious, writhing inside with barely suppressed lusts. I would lie on my bed in the middle of the day, draw the curtains and try to subdue the fire rising in my flesh, with little success. 

Bilbo must have noticed. He had started to act strangely around me, sometimes avoiding me altogether to withdraw into his private rooms and study his maps and papers. I would initiate conversations, which Bilbo would not engage in, but answer distractedly and tap his fingers, as if he had somewhere he must go to urgently. By the end of the summer, it became clear to me that Bilbo was losing his faith in his ability to reign me in. He was skirting around me as if I were a fire that might scorch his skin should he come too close. The days were closing in and Sam had started to light bonfires to clear away the summer’s waste. Blackberries bloomed on the hedgerows. I watched Bilbo, but he would not look at me. 

It was hardly a surprise when finally he disappeared altogether. To have done so in such an elaborate fashion only went to prove how anxious he was to distract others from the true reason for his flight. All at once I was alone, and suddenly there was no one else to keep me from myself, but my own weakening will. Perhaps this was a test, a trial I must endure in order to overcome? I longed for company; often I would keep poor Sam standing in the kitchen, supping tea for an inordinate length of time, unwilling to let him go. Sam didn’t seem too impatient, at least he never complained, but spoke to me of his thoughts and stared at me - not in the odd way I was used to, but softly, kindly, making something hard inside me crumble like powder. 

As he left, I would watch him disappearing down the garden path, holding onto the sight of him, and then I would take a candle and go to my bed, locking the door on the inside and hiding the key, hoping it could not be easily uncovered in the dark. 

As the days turned to winter, there was less and less reason for Sam to come up the hill and I began to turn extravagant plans over in my head, of keeping him here, as my help and my friend. I wondered if his father would allow it, for I knew that he helped out with other work over the winter months, not least with the chopping of wood and the mending of broken fences and gates, which could keep him busy for days at a time. 

Of course I only had to ask and he was there, standing on the doorstep with a small bundle of possessions at his feet and a bright eager smile on his face. I welcomed him gratefully and told him to sit down in the parlour and take some tea with me. He looked surprised, asking if there weren’t any pressing jobs I would like him to start on, but I shook my head and insisted. And so we spent many hours, sitting side by side, talking and laughing and filling up the dead hours of those long winter days, snow pattering down as the nights drew in. Sometimes we played like youngsters at games in our heads, or else invented from whatever was to hand. At night he would sleep across the hall in his own little bed and the knowledge that he was there comforted me, so I no longer found it needful to lock my door. 

One afternoon, as the late winter sunlight streaked the sky with orange and pink, and we sat in the parlour together, talking and eating hot buttered toast, warming our feet by the fire. Sam started to talk of the gardener’s reliance on the moon for the planting and reaping of crops. He was very knowledgeable on the subject and talked for a great while, as I lay back on the cushions and listened, following his train of thought as sometimes we followed the cloud patterns in the sky. As his conversation turned to the full phase of the moon, my heart began to beat hard and heavy, as if it was labouring under a great strain. 

‘And tell me, Sam,’ I said. ‘When is the next full moon?’

‘It was just coming to the full last night, so it shall be at its roundest tonight and very bright by the looks of that sky.’

Something in me keened and in a fit of panic, I stood and, trying to divert myself from the yearning of it, I clasped Sam’s shoulders and tried to embrace him, clumsily, my breath hitching on his neck. Sam sat very still, still as a hare, just allowing it. When I drew back, I laughed strangely and turned to the window, remarking on the beauty of the evening sky, the taste of Sam’s skin still in my throat, sweet and earthy, like the first cutting of the grass. I clung to it fiercely, thinking on no other thing.

That night, we passed one another in the hall. Sam was on his way back from the bathing room and was still damp from the bath, his night shirt clinging to his skin and his hair running into his eyes, and in that lamp-lit passage between our two rooms, I thought him perfectly beautiful. 

I went to bed that night with thoughts of Sam in my head and, roused by my own desires, I imagined what it would be like to be held in Sam’s arms, kissed and touched and made beloved by him. Restless, I twisted and turned in my bed until the moon rose high in the sky, swollen white and very low, hanging just above the fork of the damson tree. As I pressed my face into the pillow, I felt it’s light searing the bedclothes, and despite the coldness of the season, I grew hot and arched against the cool sheets. Frustrated, I flung back the covers and stepped across the room, my head buzzing and pounding, my body yearning. Through the gap in the curtains the moonlight shone brightly and I felt its pull, dragging my desire possessively for itself. For a moment I was torn, my thoughts still caught up with Sam, and then I opened the casement and it was decided for I heard, in the stillness of the night, the sound of the water roaring, and I was lost to the night.

The first thing I remembered on waking, was the sour taste in the back of my throat, the yeasty, rank taste of fiery drink and river water, made sickeningly sweet by the perfume of lily of the valley. My head was swimming with disturbed visions that came into sharp focus only to dissolve a moment later, like a dream upon waking – thick black mud, moonlight on stone, unshaven faces and boots, heavy-soled boots and tight-laced corsets, stone and timber and the moon reflected in black puddles on the road, roaring and laughing and wailing – the wailing was the worst, high-pitched and greedy. 

The second thing was the weight in my limbs, as if I had been dragging a heavy load, every muscle in my body aching unbearably and my tendons thrumming as though they had been stretched beyond endurance. 

I turned on the bed to look at myself in the mirror. Almost flinching at the sight, I saw that I was wearing my best clothes, but they were stained and tattered, dried mud encrusting the bottom of my breeches and dried hard on my calves. My white shirt was splashed with something dark, the colour of expensive wine. My face looked terrible – pale and stunned, with dark circles under my eyes, my hair tussled and tangled as if I had been dragged through a hedge backwards. 

Horrified and shaken, I hurried to my washstand to splash cold water over my face. Just as I was clattering with the jug against the bowl, my hand shaking so hard I couldn’t help chiming one against the other, there came a tapping on the door and Sam shouted if I needed any fresh water. I must have choked out a reply, for Sam came in at once and was right beside me, holding up my face to the light. 

‘What’s happened to you?’ he said softly. 

And of course, I could tell him nothing, for I knew nothing myself of what had occurred and could only shake my head and hold back the tears that were welling in my eyes. I must have looked as if I had gone mad, for he regarded me with deep concern and awkward tenderness, guiding me to the bed and carefully stripping me of my stained garments, commenting neither on the mud nor the wine and perfume that lingered over them. Instead he quietly suggested laundering them in lemon and vinegar to rub out the marks, that they would come out easy as peas from the pod. His hands were soft and light over my skin as he worked, but I tried not to let the thought of them quicken my blood, concentrating instead on how I might explain my state, troubled that Sam would think me a rake. Yet Sam showed no sign of disapproval, only went carefully, lovingly about his work, tending to the bruises on my legs and chest, and rubbing my sore muscles with comfrey oil. When he was done, he wiped his hands on a towel and looked down at me in such concern, the tears fell down my face. He bent to me then, and wiped them away with his fingers. 

All that day I spent soundly sleeping in my bed, troubled neither by memory or dream, but soothed by the memory of Sam’s gentle touch. Every now and then, he would creep into the room and make me sip from a mug of herb tea sweetened with honey. He would stay a little while, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching as I drifted back into sleep and then when I woke again, he would be gone and I would long for him to return. When the day waned to evening, and the rain pattered against the windows like tiny pebbles thrown by an invisible hand, I started to fear the rising of the moon. When Sam came with supper on a tray, I gripped his wrist as he made to go. Surprised, he turned to me with questioning eyes. 

‘Lock the door, Sam,’ I said, hoarsely. ‘Lock the door on the way out and take the key.’

Sam looked confused. ‘Why should I need to lock the door, Mr Frodo? If you’re afraid of burglars I shall sit up by your door.’

But I insisted, ‘No, Sam, please, do as I ask…’

Sinking down onto the bed, Sam looked at me with pleading in his eyes. ‘Please tell me what’s wrong, so’s I can protect you from it,’ he said.

My heart crumpled inside me as if it were made of paper. ‘You can’t protect me Sam. It is better this way, believe me.’

Sam’s face grew dark and when he looked at me there was sadness there but also defiance. ‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘I can’t lock you in.’

‘You must!’ I pleaded, sitting up and gripping the sheets tightly in my hands. 

Sam shook his head. ‘Either you let me stay and care for you or else I shall have to go – I can’t bear it, Mr Frodo…’

Sighing in exhaustion, I sank back against the pillows and set my eyes the curtains, silvered now at the edges and moving softly in the draught from the door. ‘Set your candle down then Sam.’

I weakened, the fear of another lost night, another fractured memory of terrible excesses and debaucheries made me hungry for company. Besides I was also, of course, growing needy of him in other ways. Indeed, I was almost certain that I must be falling in love with him – the very thing that I was warned not to do. I could never have hidden it forever.

Sam seemed relieved but also anxious, for he moved tentatively about the room, tidying clothes and ornaments and stoking up the fire. When all was straight, he stood looking lost and awkward. I told him to come and sit by me and talk. He asked me what I wanted to talk about and I said, anything, anything at all, it didn’t matter. I just wanted the comfort of his voice and the warmth and reassurance of his presence. At first he sat in the chair, but I could see that he wasn’t comfortable on that hard seat and managed to persuade him onto the bed. He looked uncomfortable at first, but I smiled and tried to put him at his ease, turning our talk to subjects that I knew were favourites of his. I tried to put all else from my mind but the ebb and flow of Sam’s thoughts and the sweet way his eyes would slant as he smiled and the warm scent of his skin and hair. I turned my face towards him and felt the love in me growing moment by moment until it was almost painful not to put myself in his lap. 

If it were not for the sudden shaft of moonlight piercing my eyes, I might have done it, but as it was, the only thing I felt was the rising of my blood, and the prickling down my spine, as the moonlight began to set about its work. Sam must have heard my gasp, for he stopped abruptly in mid-flow, and stared. 

‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

I couldn’t answer; I was losing myself, coming apart in threads, trying to find a way of holding onto my slipping self. Gasping, I begged him to hold my hand, keep me down, stop me running to the river. Sam looked confused as he knelt on the bed beside me and took hold of my hand as instructed. 

‘Too tight!’ I husked, wriggling in my pinching clothes. 

Sam’s eyes raked my body, watching how it writhed and thrust up as if to an invisible lover, as the moonlight lapped my skin like water. Tearing open my shirt with amazing strength, I felt Sam’s steady gaze bearing down on me, pinning me into myself, onto the bed, the covers, the earth below. My instincts prickled, raised, like a cat’s hackles as I battled against them. My clothes were unbearably tight now; my breeches aching and pinching between my legs where I was already becoming hot. My legs kicked at the foot of the bed, rattling the frame. Sam was murmuring words that I could barely hear, stroking my sweaty forehead and trying to ease me down. Once he finally managed to coax my head back onto the pillow only for me to reach up and grasp his face greedily, kissing his mouth hungrily until it parted and I felt the touch of his little tongue upon mine, wet and wanting. It was strange but as I kissed him blindly, I wondered at how small his mouth was, quite dainty and light, almost consumed by my own. 

Finding myself growing bolder and hungrier, wanting more, I pushed Sam away, afraid for him, for his goodness and his innocence. Panting, I pulled up my knees against my chest and rested my chin on them, staring at Sam as he lay crumpled, staring at me in wide-eyed shock. His amazement stilled my fast-beating heart and I managed to control myself enough to ask him what he saw. For I wanted to know, I needed to find out, despite my fears.

Sam was shaking his head, his eyes like saucers, but he did not run away, instead he came closer and very lightly, curiously put his hands over my feet and stroked them, never once taking his eyes from my face. 

‘They’re so smooth,’ he said. ‘Like silk.’

I blinked, and stared back, willing him to go on. 

‘And your legs.’ He put his hands to my calves and then moved them up my thighs. ‘They are long as reed stalks…so are your arms….and your neck…’ Sam gulped, touching each part in turn.‘Your neck is curved as a swan’s…and your hair…your hair is…’ Sam twined it around his fingers and tugged gently, ‘Beautiful,’ he said.

I asked him if I wasn’t awful to see, but he only came closer and laid his head against my chest, stroking my hair and gentling me with soft touches of his lips over my fevered skin. Little by little, I calmed and wrapped my arms around him, scared that I might hurt him, and yet unable to resist the pull of my love and my longing. 

‘Oh, me dear, how did you come to this?’ he said. 

‘I was told it was something in the water, I swam in the moonlight and I woke it up. Now I’m drawn to it and it is drawn to me. I can’t help myself, I go to the river and I follow it all the way to Bree…I don’t know what happens in that place, but I am sure it is beyond the pale…I wake with the scent of women on my mouth!’

Sam laughed, I don’t know if it was disbelief, amazement or some strange delight, but he laughed. ‘Come on Mr Frodo,’ he said, encouragingly, ‘come and see.’

I didn’t want to go with him, I wanted only to ask him how he had shrank to the size of a fauntling, but I let him pull me from the bed, stifling a curse as I nearly hit my head upon a beam. Taking a candle in his hand, Sam took me to the mirror, which he adjusted slightly, tipping it up to the ceiling, then he held the light up as high as he could reach with his little arm. I couldn’t believe it; I wanted to laugh wildly or else run my hands over my body in thrilled shock. For I was myself, but more, my legs and arms jutted out of my skin-tight clothes, my neck held my head proudly, stiffly, my hair spilling out over my shoulders in long, tangled waves. I was tall, dissolute and half-dressed; my eyes burning brightly as if they had some fire in them that could not be quenched. I ran my hand curiously over my chin; there was a dark roughness there that pricked the skin – a hobbit made man.

Sam stepped back, holding the candle cupped in his palm, turning my silvery skin to gold. ‘Look at you,’ he breathed. ‘You’re magnificent.’

So that was what was buried inside, the form and wildness of the big folk, large and rugged, with all of the very worst of their nature encoded within the pattern of my own self. I closed my eyes, willing the sight of my new self away. I looked for Sam, but could not see him. 

‘Here,’ Sam said, laying his warm, soft head against my hip, his gentle lips trembling against my burning, over-sensitive skin. ‘Here.’

And in that moment, I wanted him so much, my body seemed to melt under me and  
before I knew it, I had sank to the bed in a dead faint, the mirror slipping from its stand to fall to the floor and smash into a thousand tiny shards, each holding a face of the moon. 

When I came to my senses, it was to the feel of his light, ticklish breaths against my thigh. The sensation was almost unbearably sweet. Sitting up, the dead of night passed and the moonlight softened, I felt the tremors of my human form passing through me as it departed, leaving me shaken and tattered, Sam’s mouth now pressed against an empty hollow in the sheets. As if aware, his eyes opened slowly and looked at me once again in my own shape.

‘So you know now what I am,’ I said, touching his hair. ‘And you must go away, to save yourself from ravishment.’

Sam got up unsteadily to throw another log on the fire, for the room had suddenly grown chill, and then he stood for a long while, his eyes distant and wondering. ‘What if I don’t want saving?’ he said at last, turning back to me. ‘What then?’

I was stunned, my mouth dry as ashes. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘All I do know is I cannot be trusted when I am… that other way.’

‘I restrained you well enough, didn’t I, sir?’ Sam said, growing more confident, his green eyes sparkling as he came to the bed. 

I pulled him close and without further thought, put my arms about him and held him to me, burying my mouth in his hair, wanting him desperately to stay, despite the warnings in my heart. I couldn’t bear for him to go away. 

‘Perhaps you might take me swimming?’ Sam said shyly. ‘In the moonlight, then  
might we be the same?’

‘You can’t swim.’ I took his face in my hands, baffled. ‘Dear Sam,’ I groaned. ‘I don’t think you have it in you.’

I kissed him then, achingly slowly, pulling back with every new caress, opening up his lovely, wanton mouth inch by inch, tipping it with my tongue, watching the beauty of his face transfigure as desire made it soft and dreamlike. 

We are bound now together, with a secret so deep and so dark it can never be spoken of in daylight. Only at night, under a full moon, Sam will remember to bring the scarves and the candles and he will shutter out that moon with cries so exquisite, they rend the night like silk.


End file.
